That was tedious

[howeird]

Up and out of bed in record time, BP was way high - makes no sense first thing in the morning. Hgl was down in a good range. I thought about going to the 10 am welcome party at the community center - every month they invite us all to welcome new residents - but I didn't want to get caught in the rain.

Spook wanted some attention so I brushed her for about 20 minutes - she needs her claws trimmed but won't let me pick her up. She's hard to brush because she mostly just wants to rub her face, and she changes sides regularly. brushing her back is a challenge, she keeps walking away and rolling onto her back.

Lots of stuff on FB to keep me amused. The level of paranoia about everything is unreal.

Reading the news is almost as bad. The Bangkok online news sites say the dictator is way in the lead to be elected PM. He was supposed to have resigned 4 years ago. He hasn't allowed any political opposition, and everyone is scared to run against him.

So to pass the time, and to acknowledge the spherical enabling device in the room, I pulled the plug on the Iris hub, and moved some wires around to make the Samsung Smartthings hub in charge again. Lowe's is doing away with the Iris in a month, after I had just switched over to it from the Samsung.

This meant unplugging all my wall switches, bringing them into the office so they were in range of the hub, resetting them (which usually involved holding down an awkwardly placed button while plugging it into a power strip) and setting them up in the Samsung app. And then linking the app to Google Home and Alexa. The kitchen lights are on a switch built into the wall, it took two YouTube videos to find the right reset/pairing sequence. The laundry room light bulbs are in a ceiling fixture, and those took a web search to find that pairing them was a simple matter of turning the switch on and off 10 times.


3 motion sensors - office, bedroom and laundry room
They are set to turn the lights on in the room, and turn them off after 5 minutes of no motion
1 outlet switch in the office
2 for the bedroom lights
2 for the livingroom lights
1 out on the carport for the car charger
1 in the guest room
1 for the livingroom stand fan
2 bulbs in the laundry room fixture
1 kitchen wall switch.


The home theater system is through a Logitech remote control, and Google/Alexa link to its Harmony app, so no Smartthings connection there. It controls the TV, A/V Receiver, Tivo, Amazon Fire and blueray player

It needs some tweaking, Alexa tells me it doesn't recognize all the devices and Google sometimes does what I ask and then says it doesn't recognize the device, or it thinks there are two of them. I still need to figure out why the switch in the guest room, which has worked since the beginning, won't pair any more.

Watched a storm chaser drive out to the formerly overflowing Kankakee River with his wife. Lots of chatters online. The river is still pretty high and flowing swiftly. Most of the snow has melted. It's Chicago, Lake Effect Central, and I expect another month of snow. Just not today. One storm chaser is also a furry, he was at a furry bowling party, lots of folks in costume. The other chasers were playing online video games. Have not seen the Vegas roadside assistance guy in several nights.

The Google Cloud building was at it again




On Tivo were two episodes of Dating Unfiltered and The Orville. The latter is back to its core competency, but seriously heavy-handed with the moral. They could have gone with a less grim ending. They also said goodbye to the not at all charismatic new love interest for the hot blonde first officer.

Breakfast was a banana and a Kind bar. Lunch was late, made do with bagels & lox. Breaded fish fillets covered in mozzarella and a side of mixed veggies for dinner.

Evening BP was a little low. Hmm.

Plans for tomorrow:
Not much. Meet Janice at the local Pete's at 5. I'll probably go earlier with the laptop and see if my Bose phone earbuds work with the Dell.
The kitchen floor could stand some swiffering.